your time.”
Up ahead a brand-new building is replacing an old one. I can’t remember what used to be there. People in brightly colored vests are scurrying around, cutting and nailing and bolting. I think about the town having expanded, and how it will expand some more. At some point it will double, and then over time it will double again. In a hundred years this new building will be pulled down to make way for another one. That’s what progress is — pulling apart the past and making it better.
“I’m glad you called,” I tell her. “It was good coming back here.”
“You mean that?”
“Of course. Even somewhat cathartic.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “So what are you going to do now?”
It’s a tough question, and one I’ve been asking myself on the drive from the station. “Do you think we should tell Father Frank the truth?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she finally says. “I . . . I guess not.”
“That’s my feeling too. Let’s tell him what Drew told us, that she’s safe but everything going on here is too much for her to handle. I’ll talk to her, and see if I can convince her to return home.”
“Are you going to head back home today?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just . . .” she says, but then doesn’t say what. I stay silent as she formulates her thoughts. “It’s silly, you know? You coming all the way out here and going right back.”
“I have no reason to stay.”
“I . . . I guess I can see that,” she says. “I have to pick up Harry after school. How about I come and get you from the church after that, and drive you back out to the airport?”
“I’d appreciate it,” I say, trying to imagine how I’m going to spend the next few hours. Maybe I should go back to the pool.
She goes quiet again. More silence on my end and more thoughts being formulated on hers. “You . . . you should stay,” she says.
I don’t say anything.
“At least for a night. We could have breakfast tomorrow morning after I’ve dropped the kids off at school. Catch up some before I take you to the airport. It’ll be easier for me to do that, because it means I won’t have to get home late tonight.”
Seeing Maggie has sparked up emotions I haven’t felt in a long time. I wasn’t kidding when I told Drew earlier I’d moved on — I have — but I also can’t deny that the reason I’ve let my relationships since then peter out is because none of those women were Maggie. So maybe I haven’t moved on as much as I thought. After all, I beat a man unconscious so I could get my phone back to be able to return Maggie’s call.
“Noah?”
“I’d like to stay, except for the fact Old Man Haggerty is probably putting together some kind of lynching party.” I make the turnoff into the church. I park the Toyota where I found it earlier. The engine sighs with thoughts of retirement when I shut it off.
“How about I meet you at the church in forty-five minutes? Maybe we can figure something out. Then if you want to go, I’ll take you out to the airport.”
“Okay. Thanks, Maggie.”
I find shade beside the porch where the lawn is greener and longer than anywhere else. I lean up against the apple tree and decide to help out its overweight branches by lessening the load. I polish my apple up against my shirt and carry it inside. The air is thicker and I can hear the oxygen machine and the fan and Father Frank’s chest singing out its death rattle. I’m a couple of steps in when I hear a creaking floorboard behind me. I don’t manage to turn all the way before something hard and heavy smacks me in the side of my head. I hit the ground in a heap and stare at a pair of feet in a pair of cowboy boots.
Fourteen
I can smell dust on the floor. I can hear the clock in Father Frank’s room ticking. I can hear the oxygen machine. The apple I was holding has come to a stop against the wall. I can see jigsaw puzzle pieces of dirt that have fallen out of the soles of somebody’s shoes — maybe out of the cowboy boots I’m staring at. One of those boots swings back, and then swings forward, and I barely manage to get my arm in front of my face to take the impact. I can’t stop the second one; it’s aimed at my stomach, and it punches the air out of me. I’m grabbed around my ankles and dragged outside. The boards of the porch are hot. Nails snag at my shirt and scratch at my back. My head, already spinning, bounces up and down. I’m pulled off the porch into the sun and my spine digs into the edge of the step before slamming into the shingle, my head getting the same result. Then shade as the person doing this crouches over me. My cellphone is ringing.
Conrad Haggerty’s face is full of anger, and something else too, a certain sense of smug satisfaction. “I always hoped you’d come back,” he says, spitting the words at me. “Every day I prayed for it, and now here you are.” He punches me in the side of the face, and there isn’t anything I can do, except bleed on his fist and hope one of his fingers breaks. I roll onto my side and push my hands into the ground and try to get onto my knees. Small stones dig into the palms of my hands. Conrad swings in a kick that I try to turn away from. His foot covers my eye and cheek and part of my nose. Maybe something breaks, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. He kicks me again and my teeth loosen and the impact puts me on my back again.
“I used to say to myself, Conrad, if you could do anything to that prick who hurt you, what would you do? Would you cut off his fingers?” he says, and he’s holding a knife in front of my face now. “And I’d say to myself, You know what, Conrad? I think that’s a good idea.”
He rolls me onto my stomach and zip ties my hands behind me, then drags me toward Father Frank’s car. He gets the trunk open, gets my head and shoulders into it, and then stops when somebody yells out at us. He lets me go and I fall back to the ground, my shoulder taking the impact.
A man is walking across the parking lot from the church. I blink rapidly until my vision sharpens. It hits me then that Father Frank may have a replacement. It’s probably who the second car in the parking lot belongs to. People still need to get married and still need to die and still need to confess and ask why God does this or that without reason, and this is the guy who’s getting all that asking.
“This ain’t any of your business, Father,” Conrad says.
“I may not know what’s going on here, son,” he says, “but I can certainly tell you that it is my business.”
My protector is wearing a black shirt with a white clerical collar. It’s hard to guess his age. Could be forty, could be fifty-five. He’s completely bald, and balances that baldness out with a beard that’s white in the front and black around the sides. He’s six foot and two-hundred-plus pounds. He looks like he could tie Conrad into a knot. His voice is deep and authoritative.
“Why don’t you piss off inside, Father, and mind yourself?”
“I could do that,” the priest says. “I could go in there and call the police. Maybe get you arrested, maybe have you spend a few nights in jail before getting charged with assault and spending even longer.”
“Phone them if you want, old man, there’s no way in hell they’re sending me to jail.”
“You sure about that? Whatever beating you’ve come to administer, well, you’ve administered it. Anything else you had in mind, you best let that go, then come back tomorrow and thank me for not taking the other option.”
“Which is . . .?”
“Which is me kicking your ass.”
Conrad isn’t sure how to respond. What he came to do clearly isn’t going to get done.
“Seriously, son, walk away before anything else has to happen. Or you spend tonight